Thursday, April 23, 2015

Shutter Island

Shutter
Island is a film from 2010 starring Leonardo Dicaprio as the main character,
Teddy Daniels, a U.S. marshal. The year is 1954, and he is assigned to investigate
the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Ashecliffe Hospital located on a
mysterious island called Shutter Island. He's been pushing for an assignment on
the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders if he has been
brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose strange treatments
are unethical and sinister. Teddy's clever investigating skills soon provide a
promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects
would give him more information about the case. As a hurricane cuts off
communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals try to escape in the
confusion, and the puzzling clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything -
his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

In
the end, a major plot twist is revealed. It turns out that "Teddy" is
actually a delusional mental patient in the hospital, not a U.S. marshal. He
murdered his depressed wife Dolores Chanal after she drowned their three
children. Because he was a mental patient at the hospital, the doctors decided to
try a role-play experiment to allow him to live out his delusional fantasy in
order to come to terms with reality. The treatment plan works, and he is retold what has happened to him and he accepts what he did to his wife.
However, in the final scene he relapses to a delusional state. It is implied
that he is faking his relapse so he will not have to deal with the mental suffering
of his act, because he feels personally responsible for his wife murdering
their children.